Now All Thing D has reported that CEO Phillip Humm has become a casualty of that failure, resigning effective immediately. He will not be transfered to Deutsche Telekom as some past T-Mobile USA executive dropouts have been.

There does not appear to be any other extenuating circumstances that lead to his departure except, perhaps, that Mr. Humm's family was stuck in Europe, which surely created some personal hardship.

In a statement the company writes, "Philipp Humm has given the company some important initiatives over the past years: Under his leadership the cost situation at T-Mobile USA has vastly improved and he led the company during a difficult phase regarding the planned merger with AT&T."

The CEO had led the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary since November 2010, but had made little progress in stemming the tide of its losses.

T-Mobile has been stepping up its HSPA+ efforts, but this "3.5G" tech has struggled to compete against the bleeding edge at AT&T and Verizon Wireless -- a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and Vodafone Group Plc. (LON:VOD) -- both of whom have deployed "4G" LTE.

Jim Alling, T-Mobile USA's current COO, will step in to jointly act as interim CEO, while a search for a new chief is conducted. Whoever lucks into that job has a tough job ahead in fixing up the struggling carrier.

I have to disagree most strongly. Spints' downturn started in 2004 when they made customer service policy changes, which made it very difficult to solve problems. Every carrier has problems. But how it chooses to help it's customer base solve those problems is what defines it in the long term. They have to strike a balance, and Sprint lost theirs long ago.